Sometimes (although not occasionally enough for my liking) I watch a film that is so bad that it actually makes me angry. Factors which affect my frustration level include a wasted budget, pointless remakes, incompetent editing, clueless directing and shoddy acting. The remake of Rollerball includes all these things and so much more.
I also don�t like it when people who have no interest or understanding of sci-fi try to impinge on the genre for financial success. This film smacks of people who don�t understand what they are dealing with and think that a few funny costumes make a near-future and that if you put in some silly TV channels it automatically becomes satire. In this clich�d future, Chris Klein brings his infuriatingly vacuous, upcoming NHL rookie to Central Asia to become a foreign star in the rapidly growing sport of Rollerball.
I would expand on the sport but the game concept is rattled off so fast by real-life ECW owner Paul Heyman (funny I saw him twice this week: in Beyond The Mat as well) and the action scenes so ineptly filmed that I really can�t be bothered; you never see the full arena, apart from in computer replays, and everyone is filmed so close-up that you can�t see any play � they actually look like they are just going round and round the local roller-skating rink at slow speed. When Jean Reno�s league boss starts encouraging life-threatening sabotage to boost ratings, Klein tries to escape the corruption with team captain LL Cool J and random breast-flasher Romjin-Stamos (thank god she only spoke a couple of lines in X-Men). Of course, they leave the rest of their teammates to continue slowly circling an old Gladiator's set wearing ridiculously unwieldy headgear.
I�ve not seen the original Rollerball and frankly it couldn�t be any worse. In fact, the whole concept was done a lot better in the straight-to-video Futuresport, starring ex-Superman Dean Cain. Which kind of says it all really. |
